Edwina Currie: I have nothing to hide over Jimmy Savile

Edwina Currie has claimed she has 'nothing to hide' after it emerged she
appointed Jimmy Savile as head of a taskforce at Broadmoor high security
psychiatric hospital where victims say they were abused.

Edwina Currie appointed Savile to run a taskforce in charge of Broadmoor in the 1980s, where he is accused of sexually assaulting patientsPhoto: GEOFF PUGH

By Robert Mendick, and Laura Donnelly

12:13PM BST 21 Oct 2012

Edwina Currie today defended her decision to allow Jimmy Savile to head up a taskforce driving reforms at Broadmoor hospital where he is accused of sexually assaulting patients.

Savile, despite having no expertise in mental health, was given the job of chairman of the taskforce overseeing Broadmoor in 1988 after the hospital had been placed under direct control of the Thatcher government following a series of strikes.

Mrs Currie at the time was health minister with responsibility for the country’s high security hospitals under the auspices of Kenneth Clarke, the then-Health Secretary. Savile counted himself as a friend of Margaret Thatcher and reportedly stayed at Chequers on a number of occasions.

Pete Saunders, the chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, said of Savile's role at the mental hospital: "It really is akin to giving Dracula the keys to the blood bank."

Today Currie said the Department of Health was digging out papers surrounding the appointment, but she insisted she had 'nothing to hide.'

It goes back at least 25 years, even 30 years and isn’t just to do with me at all. But as and when documents do surface, they should be published in full,” she told the BBC this morning. “I have nothing to hide.”

It is claimed that a series of institutional failings gave Savile access to victims and prevented his detection in his lifetime.

The revelations come as pressure intensifies over the current BBC management’s decision to drop a Newsnight investigation into Savile.

The BBC will go to war with itself tomorrow when Panorama, it flagship news programme, threatens to dismantle the corporation’s official reason for doing so.

A Sunday Telegraph investigation today reveals:

* Currie appointed Savile to run a taskforce in charge of Broadmoor in the 1980s, where he is accused of sexually assaulting patients;

* the taskforce he presided over was given temporary powers to oversee the running of the hospital following a series of industrial disputes - despite the fact Savile, a disc jockey and television presenter, had no professional qualifications;

* a friend of Savile’s from his hometown in Leeds was then given the most senior job at Broadmoor;

* the BBC investigated a lurid sex scandal at Top of the Pops and Radio 1 in the early 1970s, but never made the report public;

* Savile was interviewed by the BBC as part of that inquiry but refused to cooperate, according to a senior source.

Scotland Yard last week announced it was launching a full-scale criminal inquiry into other members of Savile’s alleged sex ring who remain alive. The Met police is now looking at 400 separate lines of inquiry and more than 200 potential victims.

Savile had had a long association with Broadmoor, having been a volunteer worker there in the 1970s and 1980s with the unofficial title “honourary entertainments officer”. He had his own set of keys and living quarters on site.

The former minister told The Sunday Telegraph that having checked her personal diaries, she had found a note of a meeting with Savile in Leeds in September 1988 - the month the taskforce was appointed. In the entry she described his thoughts on Broadmoor as “intriguing”.

Mrs Currie recorded that during the meeting Savile had told her that he suspected staff were inflating their salaries - and that he had threatened to pass the information to the tabloid papers if the staff caused him any trouble.

Savile also told her he had uncovered millions of pounds missing from budgets and poor use of the hospital’s housing stock.

“In my diary, I wrote 'Attaboy’, she said. “This was what he claimed to be doing; now it is hard to know whether any of it is true. And obviously when you look back, it does suggest he was prepared to use blackmail to ensure people did what he wanted.”

Mrs Currie, who had previously met Savile on his television programme Jim’ll Fix it and on visits to Leeds General Infirmary, where he also worked, said she now thought the presenter was “totally evil” and that she was glad criminal investigations were underway.

Savile once described himself in a newspaper interview as “the boss of Broadmoor” and in 1989 said he was responsible for the freeing of 60 patients and intended to introduce “mixed sex wings” so patients could fall in love with each other.

Following Savile’s appointment at Broadmoor, Alan Franey, an administrator who spent 10 years working at Leeds General Infirmary, also began work on the same taskforce, with progress to be reported to Mrs Currie.

In a book about psychiatric care, Mr Franey described having “an unusual meeting” with health officials in the Athenaeum Club in London, where his new role on the temporary taskforce was proposed.

He neglected to mention in the book that Savile, who was a member of the Athenaeum, was also present. When asked by The Sunday Telegraph if Savile was also there, Mr Franey agreed.

In 1989, Mr Franey was put in overall charge of Broadmoor, where he remained for nine years before retiring as chief executive.

Mr Franey worked as an assistant general manager at Leeds General Infirmary from 1975 to 1985, when the television presenter was volunteering as a night porter. Savile is also accused of sexually abusing girls at the Leeds hospital.

Mr Franey said he got to know Savile because they were among half a dozen men who ran charity marathons together. He said: “I am absolutely astonished. There was absolutely no indication that he was doing what was alleged.”

Mr Franey insisted his friendship with Savile did not help him to get the job on the taskforce, and that he later got the job as general manager of Broadmoor through open competition.

Mr Franey took early retirement from Broadmoor following an inquiry into the hospital in March 1997. The inquiry followed claims made in newspapers that a child pornography ring was operating at Broadmoor.

Although the full report was never published, a summary found no evidence to support the allegations but made some criticisms of lax security while pointing out the hospital had actually improved under Mr Franey’s management.

Mr Franey is insistent that he only resigned because he wished to write a book and was ready to retire. He is now a Conservative councillor in Welwyn Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

Last night, Ray Rowden, a former senior NHS executive supervising England’s three high-security hospitals - a job he took up in 1996, a year before Mr Franey’s retirement - said: “He [Mr Franey] used to boast that he would drive him [Savile] around nightclubs in Leeds in the 1980s.”

Mr Rowden said that on his first visits to Broadmoor, he was shocked that Savile appeared to be able to turn up at whenever he wanted - as did Princess Diana - and tackled Mr Franey about it.

“I said to him how can you let Princess Diana and Jimmy Savile into Broadmoor to wander about whenever they want? This is a high-security hospital - would you let any other Tom, Dick or Harry in?”

Mr Franey said claims he had driven Savile to nightclubs was “rubbish”. He added: “I have never been to a nightclub in my life.” He said the conversation with Mr Rowden about visits from Savile and Princess Diana never occurred.

Savile was caught up in a sex scandal that engulfed Top of the Pops and Radio 1 in the early 1970s when police investigated claims that music companies hired prostitutes for disc jockeys and producers in return for playing their records on air.

The same officers also investigated the suicide of a 15-year-old dancer on Top of the Pops, who Savile is alleged to have abused. The Sunday Telegraph has been told that an independent inquiry launched by the BBC and run by a senior QC questioned Savile over the sex scandal but its findings were never made public.

Savile’s activities on Top of the Pops and other programmes where he is accused of raping and sexually assaulting girls on the corporation’s premises will form part of a new BBC inquiry into the time.

But it is the failure of the BBC to broadcast an investigation into his years of abuse that will come under the immediate spotlight.

Two journalists from Newsnight, who uncovered evidence of Savile’s sex crimes, have given interviews to Panorama questioning the BBC’s motives for ditching its original report.

Sources say emails will also question the BBC’s official version of events - that the investigation was only pulled because it failed to show failings at the Crown Prosecution Service in bringing a prosecution against Savile in 2008.

The claims will put renewed pressure on George Entwistle, the director general, who will be quizzed by MPs on the Culture Select Committee on Tuesday, only a few hours after the screening of Panorama.

Mr Entwistle faces claims that the Newsnight investigation was shelved to make way for two tribute programmes in honour of Savile following his death last year at the age of 84. At the time Mr Entwistle was BBC Director of Vision, overseeing the tribute programmes.

Much of the Newsnight evidence was contained in an ITV documentary a little over a fortnight ago which first exposed Savile as a predatory sexual offender.